Marlins’ Jazz Chisholm Jr. putting in work to hit lefties. Results are starting to show
Jazz Chisholm Jr. is probably still marveling at his moonshot from Tuesday night.
After fouling off a pair of two-strike pitches, the Miami Marlins’ center fielder blasted a low curveball from Ryan Yarbrough and sent it flying into the upper deck in right field at loanDepot park for a no-doubter of a 436-foot home run.
“I didn’t see where it landed until my teammates told me because I wasn’t really watching it,” Chisholm said after the 6-3 win against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami’s fifth consecutive victory. “I was still really hyped up in the moment, but I watched the video just now. Yeah. That’s probably one of my furthest ones.”
It was the proverbial icing on the cake for Chisholm on Tuesday. The home run was his third hit of the game after also logging a pair of infield singles and a stolen base against Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw.
All three of those hits, it should be pointed out, came against left-handed pitching, an area where the left-handed-hitting Chisholm has been striving to see results all season.
Even after that 3-for-4 outing on Tuesday, Chisholm is still hitting just .208 (52 for 250) for his career against left-handed pitchers and only .161 (10 for 62) this season.
“He’s been working really hard with the hitting group with trying to hit lefties better, so it’s not surprising when somebody works hard and you see some good luck happen, whether it’s an infield hit or whatever it is,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said postgame Tuesday. “He got three hits against lefties today. That shows signs of growth. Now, the challenge is are you going to stop working or are you going to keep working at it? Because he’s not a finished product. ... I’m proud of the work that he’s put in and I’m also hoping that it doesn’t stop.”
Given Chisholm’s dedication to his craft, don’t expect his work to stop.
Chisholm postgame mentioned a few conversations he has had lately to help get his mind in the right place.
The first was with Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts, the seven-time All-Star who is a front-runner to be the National League MVP this season and had to watch as Chisholm’s eighth-inning home run soared over his head. Betts had Chisholm on his podcast Tuesday and the topic of having success came up. Betts reminded Chisholm that you learn from failure, which prompted Chisholm to look back at all of his at-bats against left-handed pitchers.
The second was with Dee Strange-Gordon, the two-time All-Star, three-time MLB stolen base leader and 2015 NL batting champion. Strange-Gordon’s message to Chisholm was more direct.
“You’re probably the fastest person in the league when you try,” Chisholm recalled Strange-Gordon telling him.
And then there was the conversation with his manager Schumaker, who simply told him “You’re not bad against lefties. You’ve just got to work on it.”
“We’ve just been working on it for like two weeks straight,” Chisholm said. “I don’t even think about right-handed pitchers when I’m working in the cage anymore. Everything is pure lefty. Everything we do is lefty sliders, lefty curveballs, lefty sinkers. Nothing else. We’re just working straight lefties right now because he told me he needs me in the game. He needs me in center field and I need to hit lefties for that to happen.”
Tuesday was a good launching point. He showcased his ability to use both his speed and power to get hits. He outran Kershaw to the first-base bag for infield singles in the second and fourth innings, diving head-first into first for the second of those singles.
And then he hit the towering home run in the eighth to give the Marlins an insurance run.
The 436-foot blast was the fourth-longest home of his MLB career. Interestingly enough, three of those four are against left-handed pitchers, along with his 446 foot home run against the Dodgers’ Julio Urias on Aug. 7, 2021, and his 439-foot shot against the Red Sox’s Chris Murphy earlier this year. The only one of those four against a right-handed pitcher was a 443-foot home run against the Atlanta Braves’ Touki Toussaint on Aug. 16, 2021.
“It makes you smile,” Chisholm said of the success against left-handed pitching. “You go through your trial and errors, but at the same time, when you succeed, it starts to get a lot more fun.”
Added Schumaker: “We’re working on him staying on the ball so he can hit it to the big part of the field and it allows yourself to maybe hit a home run every now and then. I think he’s an everyday player. I don’t want him to be a platoon player and that’s part of his growth and maturation as a player. The only way to get through hitting against lefties is you’ve got to work at it. He’s been working hard at it.”
On the season, which has been mired by a pair of injuries (first turf toe in his right foot and then a left oblique strain), Chisholm is hitting .256 with a .765 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, 15 home runs, 19 stolen bases and 38 runs scored in 75 games played. He has at least one hit in 10 of his past 12 games and is hitting .320 in that stretch.
“Just be a good hitter,” Schumaker said. “You have to take good at-bats. Your ability is game-changing ability. That’s been the message. Don’t think about where you are as far as [your spot in the lineup]. Just go up there and hit. And I think once he started getting more comfortable, just with his timing, I think that really was the difference maker.”
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